The most talked about road trips among NBA handicappers are the trip through the Texas Triangle of Dallas, Houston and San Antonio, the trip through Florida to face the Heat and Magic and the trip through Utah and Denver.

However, perhaps the trip with the most interesting and profitable results involves a trip you can take on the Acela, the high speed train that goes between Boston and New York, with the round trip taking under four hours. The Celtics’ and Knicks’ franchises have a wealth of basketball history and success associated with them. They are in the “club” of past NBA champions. As such, these two have a certain amount of respect for each other. This respect is not manifested when they play each other – the respect is apparent when another team is trying to sweep the storied franchises on the road, back-to-back.

It seems as if New York and Boston have a pact – unspoken or other otherwise – that no team will sweep them consecutively. If a team beats the Knicks in New York, the Celtics go all out to prevent the 2-0, New York – Boston sweep.

Similarly, if a team beats the Celtics in Boston, the Knicks “pick them up” by playing significantly above the linesmakers expectations. This “agreement” has been going on for quite some time.

In fact, the league is 0-9 ATS (-8.4 ppg) since March 6th 1996 in Boston after beating the Knicks in New York. Similarly, the league is 0-10 ATS (-9.2 ppg) since January 20th 1997 in New York after beating the Celtics in Boston!

In 2007-08, there are seven road trips through New York and Boston. Five of the seven trips start in New York and two start in Boston. They are listed below, in chronological order:

clippers are not back to back today, celtics are
the other 3 teams were on a back to back*this season*

True but this trend doesn't require the opposing team to be on the back to back, as long as they play the Knicks-Celtics or Celtics-Knicks in consecutive games. It just happens to be the case that so far this season it has been on the B2b.